“We have the weather gage if ever our navy had it,” remarked Spence. “Almost straight onshore she blows, with them between us and it.”
“Aye, Lieutenant Spence, but they’ll be in water so shoal we’ll not be able to fight,” retorted Mr. Paige, their sailing master and the one most familiar with this part of the Dutch coast.
“We must cut them off, then,” declared Admiral Duncan on overhearing their conversation. “No matter we’re not formed for battle. We cannot let them go back in!”
“Captain Fairfax, run up ‘Prepare for Battle’, and take this ship in there,” he ordered, pointing at De Winter’s flagship, “behind the Vrijheid; and signal Monarch to cross through their line in the rear and engage to leeward.”
Recognizing that this could be a very costly tactic, Captain Fairfax stuttered, “Sir ….” He opened his mouth for the next word, but no sound came out. They would be fired upon not only by the ships they were approaching, but also by a large number of frigates, brigs, and other small ships the Dutch had between their line and the British. Fairfax knew this, but his mind obviously argued the urge to quote the absolute rules of the Navy’s Fighting Instructions against a direct order from his admiral. His chin went up and down, but it did not signify; Duncan was already giving the next order: “There, see? In the van, between Vrijheid and the one behind.”
“Signal!” called Duncan again. “Fight through the Dutch line and engage to leeward!”
Below on the upper gun deck, Neville could see a small Dutch ship not a cable’s length forward and to starboard of their bows. As small as she was in comparison to the Venerable, she was turning to fire her inconsequential broadside.
A pretty little bark, Neville thought as she fired the four guns on her larboard. A loud thump was heard just below his position, the entire deck quivering suddenly, almost violently. He clearly heard the blasting of the little ship’s guns a fraction of a second later, though they sounded small and distant; a curtain of white smoke surrounded her for a second before the wind drew it away.
A very strange feeling came over him. He yelled to his men: “The gnat has hit us, ha, ha, and his shots have bounced off as would so many marbles. Hold your fire, men. We’ll wait for a real ship to fight.” The Dutch bark was alongside, but not sailing as fast, and he could hear the ‘pop, pop’ of marines firing muskets from the tops down into the lesser vessel. Realizing she had made no injury whatever, she bore off downwind to avoid being smashed for no reason, and Venerable did not fire a single great gun at her. Wait. Yes, a stern chaser. “For practice, I’d guess,” and he leaned out the port far enough to see the enemy ship’s mizzen go by the boards.
Neville could also feel from the change of the ship’s motion that Venerable was pointed directly at the Dutch line – as well as the dunes by the beach. He could also see the enemy line from his vantage by the open ports as he walked behind his guns.
“Look there, Midshipman Poole,” he said to his assisting junior officer, “Monarch’s passing through their line.” An increasing rumble of cannon fire could be heard, but it was far downwind from them, and what smoke was not taken by the breeze was billowing around a melee of Dutch and British ships further south.
“Lieutenant Burton, fire from for’rd aft,” Lt. Spence ordered. Neville could easily see him above on the quarterdeck, and heard him clearly in a moment’s quiet.
He hadn’t noticed a ship, his concentration being on the Monarch’s action. He whipped his head around forward to see a large frigate surging to cross their starboard bow. Her foretopsail yard suddenly swung, and the sail whipped flat aback when she realized she would not best them, and began a rapid turn to starboard to avoid a collision with Venerable. She would fire her broadside as soon as she turned far enough.
“Fire from for’rd aft! On the uproll, gentlemen,” he repeated to his gun crews, who stood ready on the sanded decks, tools in hand and stripped to the waist despite the chill air.
“Fire one,” shrieked Midshipman Poole as the frigate presented her larboard bow. A carronade on the foredeck above boomed only slightly before Poole’s eighteen-pounder roared. “Fire two,” Poole shrieked again, even as the smoke from the previous shots obscured their target. The distance between the two ships had closed so rapidly that Neville was startled when he suddenly realized he could see down onto her deck not a quarter cable away. “Fire all!” he howled.
Why has nothing happened? Neville’s racing mind wondered for the split second. Then the ship jumped with the recoil of his remaining twenty-six eighteen-pounders on the upper deck, as well as most of the thirty-two-pounders on the deck below him.
The enemy’s guns spoke as well, resulting in momentary pandemonium when a few cannonballs found their way through Venerable’s sides beneath the hammock nettings. The head of the swabber at gun four suddenly vanished, blood squirted three feet in the air, and the remainder of his body dropped to the deck as if it were a sack of corn.
Poole’s number one fired again. From his position in the open waist, the frigate’s masts towered above him, despite that she was the smaller ship. She was so close that Neville expected to feel a crash as the two ships came together, but it never came. Venerable’s marines were firing at them from the tops, but having less effect as the frigate slid behind; her turn had slowed her such that Venerable was now charging past. Then her broken foremast was visible to him. He could see it falling as fast as the tangle of rigging would allow.
On the quarterdeck above, Captain Fairfax had been standing stiffly, observing the approaching frigate and the much larger Vrijheid looming before them. After the broadside from the Dutch frigate, he turned to issue an order, realized his first lieutenant had been shot, and looked down for the first officer he could see. It was Neville, just below him on the upper gun deck. “Lieutenant Burton, Spence is down! Get up here!”
“Poole! Command the deck!” he yelled over his shoulder and began running for the ladder. The battle scene that presented itself as he rose to the quarterdeck was more chaotic than he had expected. A crowd of ships that had been in battle for close on half an hour were in a confused clump less than a mile to the south; they were half in smoke, with some dismasted and one or two listing heavily.
Venerable herself remained in control, but Spence lay by the larboard rail, blood oozing from his forehead. The thought He might be fine flitted though Neville’s head … might only be a good knock on the head ….
The frigate remained close enough that a few of her musket balls still thumped into the deck and rails. Although a bow chaser or two fired erratically, however, she no longer seemed a threat to Venerable. A look skyward informed him that their rigging was still intact – masts all standing. The frigate had inflicted insignificant damage.
The corner of his eye caught movement that shouldn’t be … a block from the windward crossjack eye had come loose, and it began to fall on an arc that would sweep the captain over the rail into the waist. With no more thought, he leaped at his senior officer, knocking him off his feet as the block smashed the captain’s shoulder and the rigging swept by. Staggering to his feet, something else went past Neville’s head, striking a glancing blow and sending him to the rail, feet in the air. Another block? He saw the captain’s wide eyes – the truck atop the mizzen mast twinkling in a shaft of morning sunlight that found its way through the cloud cover, and the open gun port to the captain’s cabin.
How can I see that from the outside? he wondered. Is this the way Dad went over the side?
The blackness and the chill of the water both closed in on him.
21 - “Storms of Olde”
The blackness was receding, and he could hear sounds and see with a strange sort of tunnel vision. His extreme headache persisted, and he was not yet thinking clearly. I remember the noise of a naval battle – but it’s quiet now. Two ships came together. A yard block fell, but I pushed the captain aside!
I am aboard a ship now, for sure – in sickbay? He tried to lift his left ar
m. When only the fingers wriggled, he decided to try again later, and he fell back to sleep.
When he regained consciousness, the headache and vision were both slightly improved. Now his arms and legs could all be moved. Turning his head worked fine as well, but it certainly hurt.
Perhaps I have a head wound, he mused, and lifted his hand to feel for cuts. Yes, some blood.
“He’s awake, doctor,” someone called nearby, and Neville could hear footsteps approaching.
I must indeed be in sickbay.
An unfamiliar disembodied face peered down at him from behind a bright candle.
“You’ll be all right then, I see,” said the face’s booming voice, “He’ll be up in a day or so, Rundell. Get a slime draught in him. We’ll not lose another today, after all.”
A day later, he was sitting upright and looking at his surroundings with almost-clear eyes. His head still hurt, but it was more of a general headache. He had no bandage, but vaguely remembered being hit with something during the battle. He found no limbs damaged, and he could determine no other injuries. He had spoken only with Rundell, who wasn’t much on words. His response to “Where am I” from Rundell was simply the obvious: “Sickbay, Sir.” A few men had passed by him, but none he recognized.
“On what ship?” he had asked in an irritated tone. This sickbay was not familiar – was certainly not the spacious sickbay of HMS Venerable.
Oh, yes, now I remember falling over the side, he thought, with a sudden quickening of his heart. This ship could be French, Dutch, or English. I could be a prisoner …but Rundell spoke English.
“The Swan, Sir,” he replied with an almost offended arrogance.
“Swan, you say? British?”
Rundell paused before answering. “Aye, Sir. British, indeed.”
“In port, as well, I gather. There is no sea motion.”
“Aye, Sir, in Plymouth.” Rundell gave him a queer look.
A boatswain’s whistle began, and men running. “What’s being called on deck, Rundell?”
“We’re casting off for the Indies, Sir.”
A week later, Neville stood on the quarterdeck cupping his ear in an attempt to hear Swan’s First Lieutenant Gaston. The wind whipped the man’s words from his mouth as quickly as it had shredded the main topsail an hour ago. The rain, falling almost horizontally, stung Neville’s face whenever he looked to wind’rd and streamed in small rivulets off his tarpaulin hat down into his uniform beneath the awkward tarpaulin jacket … like tiny fingers of icy death, he thought.
This was the worst storm he had ever seen. Something very strange has happened, he thought to himself. I haven’t got to the bottom of what I’ve seen the last two weeks, but I doubt it has anything to do with Sir William.
He knew no more about Gaston or Captain Neville, either personally or by reputation, than he had learned in the preceding two weeks. The ship was unfamiliar, also, although she was a frigate of thirty-two guns like the Castor. She was Dutch-built, though – not identical. He was operating on his experience together with his exact orders.
The weather had been nice enough on ninth March when Swan stood for Jamaica, but that was the last of it. The weather had worsened every day for the eight days they had sailed from Plymouth. It was a full storm now. They had reduced to only a topsail on the foremast, and now even that needed reefing. He worked his way down into the waist and forward to where a dozen men were sheltering under the boats – all dreading orders to do anything at all. He was glad of the shelter; here he could make himself heard.
“Up we go, lads. Now we reef it,” he ordered. “Smartly, now, if you want your tot. You lot, to the sheets.”
They seemed a good group to Neville, and experienced enough. Up they crept, the wind shrieking about their ears and shaking the very shrouds they climbed, their fingers becoming numb and stiffer with each icy rung they touched. Neville waited at the mast while the men inched out the yard. Most lieutenants wouldn’t even go up with their men, but he needed to get to know them as fast as he could and to understand his new ship.
Looking out the yard to starboard, he could see two of his men having difficulty getting sail in. He decided to go help. He had done enough of this not long ago as a midshipman to know his business. An unusually huge wave passed beneath the hull and, when upon its crest, the ship’s bow poked high into the wind. A sudden gust ballooned the unsecured sail forward on one end. The thundering noise of the sail slapping full was not loud enough to hide the sound of cracking wood as the foremast was wrenched – nor was the sound long enough to disguise the noise of the great wave crashing into the ship’s stern and roaring forward across the decks.
Near panic engulfed Neville, his boyhood vision of a foundering ship passing across his mind like a ghost, but he controlled his fear. Together, his topmen instinctively seized the instant to claw in the canvas when the sail went momentarily limp. He took the same opportunity to scream out his order to furl the sail completely, recognizing that the mast might not be able to take the strain of it after the wrenching.
“Why have you bowsed the topsail entirely, Lieutenant Burton?” was his surly greeting by Lt. Gaston when he had reached the foot of the mainmast. Neville was pleased to see no panic. He expected that the man would listen.
“You didn’t hear it, Sir?” he shouted. “Foremast is sprung. Cracked through, she is. She might hold a jib, but I’d not trust a sail on her in this.”
“That’s captain’s to say, not ours,” Gaston retorted gruffly, “but I’ll say it for him. Hoist the jib before we founder. Captain’s busy below. The after gallery is broken, and the cabin’s awash. We have water above the ballast. After that jib is set, get your division down to help Lieutenant Wylle with the pumps.”
“Aye, aye.”
Again, Neville crept his way forward, beckoning to each of the foremast men as he saw them. They had the jib hanked on and raised in short order, and the noise of the flapping rough canvas ended with an abrupt clap as the sail was sheeted home and belayed. His stomach had turned on one wave as the ship had near broached, but the yawing of the ship as each wave passed beneath the keel was decreasing markedly. Swan was responding better to her rudder, once she was being pulled again by the wind rather than pushed by the waves. The foremast was creaking and groaning with each mound of water the ship surmounted, but it looked as if it would hold. He motioned his men back to their hiding places as he passed back along the man-rope in search of the hatch that would permit him to go below.
Neville’s thoughts were swimming; they had been swimming for a week. How on earth did I get here? I don’t remember leaving HMS Venerable or carrying a letter from the Admiralty ordering me report to Plymouth and go aboard HMS Swan but, obviously, I must have. I was told I’d been carried aboard sick and not moved for something more than a day. When I first awoke, my head felt as if someone had taken an axe-handle to it; I remember that. There was a bruise on my head, but I got that in the battle on Venerable, though I don’t remember exactly how. The bruise doesn’t seem enough to account for a headache that bad, at any rate. It would normally take at least a day to get back to England from the Dutch coast, and at least two more to sail to Plymouth, so I must have been out for some time more than Rundell told me.
Despite that, I’ve not had a proper introduction to this ship’s officers; they act as though I belong here. As I understand it, Captain Neville and First Lieutenant Gaston were so busy with arrangements for the ship’s cargo and insufferably-demanding guests that they left much of the supervision of loading to Third Lieutenant Wylle, while I lay almost comatose below.
Three long days later, the galley fires were re-lit. The foremast was strengthened with hoops and extra stays and now waited for calm weather for the ship’s carpenter to do a proper job on it.
The officers had not taken a meal together for most of a week. Those who did appear at the same time rarely had more than a grunt for each other while they wolfed down any cold bit of food the cook could provid
e. Even in these circumstances, Neville thought it odd that he was the only one who ever appeared in a proper uniform. He would have been chastised severely by any other captain he had served with if he had done otherwise. Each of the officers wore something different. Most surprisingly, even the captain of a ship carrying dignitaries did not wear the uniform of the day. During the few days before the storm, when the officers first met in a proper mess, he had almost asked about it, but bit off the thought when the first lieutenant had complimented Wylle on his appearance: “That is, indeed, a stunning uniform, Lieutenant Wylle,” he had said. “Where did you have it done? London?”
Wylle’s proud response was equally surprising: “Thank you, Sir. No, Sir, not London. It is my own design and was sewn properly here in Plymouth by our family’s tailors just a month gone by. They are quite used to naval uniform needs.” A Navy uniform of his own design?
“I shall certainly look in on them when I return,” said Gaston.
Was Swan was bound for some special situation in the Americas?
The marines’ uniforms were non-standard. The ship’s guns and the marines’ muskets had an old look to them, but Neville was no artillery expert and could not define them as antiquated, even though none had the most modern flintlock mechanisms fitted. In addition, the midshipmen, of whom there were four, were being schooled in navigation with some navigational device they had called a ‘backstaff’. The thing appeared to be some invention similar to a sextant, but not. Their almanacs and other books were not current publications, either. These all seemed scant clues. Since he had not seen orders, he would remain quietly in the dark for now, lest he be thought to have ignored reading his own. A diplomatic mission might make sense. They did have two governors aboard. Would not a diplomatic mission carry the latest in navigational equipment, though?
The Glorious First Of June (Neville Burton: Worlds Apart Book 1) Page 32
